It’s Saturday morning. It’s the first Saturday morning in a very long time where I’m not travelling. I’m not going anywhere today. Although, I may go shopping. Maybe.

I’m a bit worn out. I bet Breitenbach is worn out too. We’ve both been really rather busy; I’ve been up to things and Patrick has been doing some really interesting stuff in Karlsruhe so I thought it would be a good idea to sit down, and write a little post.

But I’m finding it hard.

There was a time when writing posts would come easily – the stuff would just come flooding out and it would just seem to work, but nowadays it doesn’t. Maybe it’s because I have nothing more to say (which is unlikely) or maybe it’s because I simply don’t have to energy (highly likely). Maybe I simply can’t be bothered (not sure about that).

As we’ve said on a number of occasions - we do things. Doing things is hard work. Talking about what other people have done is easy and talking about what you have done is probably the hardest thing of all.

Two friends of my friends, Paul and Graeme, had an idea and wanted to do it – so they did. They sat in a room and tried to write something within 24 hours and streamed the whole thing live. It turned out to be pretty hard work and their write up reminds me a little of how I felt the day after The Kaiser Mix.

Doing things is really hard work - but a lot of fun.

Good morning.

Ich bin gerade mitten in ein System getaucht und verrichte dort meine Arbeit. Brown folgt mit seinem Projekt “Social Psycho” ähnlich umfangreiche und spannende Pfade. We do things.

I’ve just started a new project called “Social Psycho” which has been influenced by some of Breitenbach’s thinking and some of the things that I’ve encountered over the course of the last couple of months. I’d thought you might find it interesting to find out what’s behind the project.

Nothing is free. Everything costs something even if that something isn’t actually money. At the heart of what someone at sometime called “web 2.0″ is the idea that everything is free, which is initially sounds great but if you actually think about it is actually quite horrid for even if you don’t actually make a credit card transaction you pay, in kind, with your most precious belonging - yourself. You pay with you personal data, and lulled into the general loveliness of this “new web” you’re more than happy to give this personal data to complete and utter strangers.

Now, I’ll leave all of the “experts” out there to argue the toss about whether or not this is “permission” (please note that these so called experts are still referring to that age old work of Mr Godin - even after all of these years) because, quite frankly, that’s just to dull. This isn’t a marketing or business issue. It’s a cultural issue.

The passing on of personal data has become, or is becoming a central factor in this our nutty post-post modern society and is in fact the motor of online life. The failure or success of an online platform is dependent upon the willingness of people to give up their personal data and then drag their friends onto the platform to do exactly the same.

This is what we call “sharing”.

We share photographs of our lives, we microblog our lives, we make connections, we poke, we inform entire networks of people what we think is interesting. We let everyone see our current location through GPS coordinates and through services like dopplr we can tell everyone where we will be traveling too next.

And on it goes. On it pushes. It’s cool. People with massive networks gain something called “influence” and they celebrate it too but this influence comes at a great cost - for they have spread their “data” everywhere.

As I’ve said above, this isn’t a business or a marketing issue it’s a cultural issue and I happen to think it’s quite alarming and I’d be interested to hear any thoughts you may have on the matter.

Hello. I haven’t done anything around here for a while now have I? I’ve been busy haven’t I? But I’ve been here, lurking and keeping an eye on all of you - especially Breitenbach.

Well, look (or listen) to this then. I am very proud to present this interview between myself and Mr. Christopher Locke; co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, author of “Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices” and he has a rather splendid blog called Mystic Bourgeoisie
too.

As you can hear from the interview we enjoyed ourselves and are planning to do these podcasts on a regular basis.

I hope you enjoy it. No, really I do. How have you all been?

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.